Paris (French pronunciation: ​[paʁi](listen)) is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres (41 square miles) and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019.[1] Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe’s major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts.

The City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France.[1] The Paris Region had a GDP of €709 billion ($808 billion) in 2017.[3] According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, and ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong, Oslo and Geneva.[4] Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong Kong, in 2018.[5]

The city is a major railway, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle (the second busiest airport in Europe) and Paris-Orly.[6][7] Opened in 1900, the city’s subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily,[8] and is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, and the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015.[9]

Paris is often referred to as the City of Light (La Ville Lumière),[16] both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more literally because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments. Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit.[17] By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps.[18] Since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam(e) (pronounced [panam]) in French slang.[19]

History

Origins

The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the CelticSenones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC.[21][22] One of the area’s major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; this meeting place of land and water trade routes gradually became an important trading centre.[23] The Parisii traded with many river towns (some as far away as the Iberian Peninsula) and minted their own coins for that purpose.[24]

Gold coins minted by the Parisii (1st century BC)

The Romans conquered the Paris Basin in 52 BC and began their settlement on Paris’ Left Bank.[25] The Roman town was originally called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, “Lutetia of the Parisii”). It became a prosperous city with a forum, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.[26]

By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would later become Paris in French.[27]Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum (Latin “Hill of Martyrs”), later “Montmartre“, from where he walked headless to the north of the city; the place where he fell and was buried became an important religious shrine, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and many French kings are buried there.[28]

Middle Ages to Louis XIV

By the end of the 12th century, Paris had become the political, economic, religious, and cultural capital of France.[29] The Palais de la Cité, the royal residence, was located at the western end of the Île de la Cité. In 1163, during the reign of Louis VII, Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, undertook the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral at its eastern extremity.

After the marshland between the river Seine and its slower ‘dead arm’ to its north was filled in around the 10th century,[30] Paris’ cultural centre began to move to the Right Bank. In 1137, a new city marketplace (today’s Les Halles) replaced the two smaller ones on the Île de la Cité and Place de la Grève (Hotel de Ville).[31] The latter location housed the headquarters of Paris’ river trade corporation, an organisation that later became, unofficially (although formally in later years), Paris’ first municipal government.

In the late 12th century, Philip Augustus extended the Louvre fortress to defend the city against river invasions from the west, gave the city its first walls between 1190 and 1215, rebuilt its bridges to either side of its central island, and paved its main thoroughfares.[32] In 1190, he transformed Paris’ former cathedral school into a student-teacher corporation that would become the University of Paris and would draw students from all of Europe.[33][29]

With 200,000 inhabitants in 1328, Paris, then already the capital of France, was the most populous city of Europe. By comparison, London in 1300 had 80,000 inhabitants.[34]

During the Hundred Years’ War, Paris was occupied by England-friendly Burgundian forces from 1418, before being occupied outright by the English when Henry V of England entered the French capital in 1420;[35] in spite of a 1429 effort by Joan of Arc to liberate the city,[36] it would remain under English occupation until 1436.

In the late 16th-century French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic League, the organisers of 24 August 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in which thousands of French Protestants were killed.[37][38] The conflicts ended when pretender to the throne Henry IV, after converting to Catholicism to gain entry to the capital, entered the city in 1594 and claimed the crown of France. This king made several improvements to the capital during his reign: he completed the construction of Paris’ first uncovered, sidewalk-lined bridge, the Pont Neuf, built a Louvre extension connecting it to the Tuileries Palace, and created the first Paris residential square, the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges. The king would end his life in the capital, assassinated in a narrow street near Les Halles marketplace in 1610.[39]

During the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, was determined to make Paris the most beautiful city in Europe. He built five new bridges, a new chapel for the College of Sorbonne, and a palace for himself, the Palais Cardinal, which he bequeathed to Louis XIII. After Richelieu’s death in 1642, it was the renamed the Palais-Royal.[40]

18th and 19th centuries

Paris grew in population from about 400,000 in 1640 to 650,000 in 1780.[43] A new boulevard, the Champs-Élysées, extended the city west to Étoile,[44] while the working-class neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on the eastern site of the city grew more and more crowded with poor migrant workers from other regions of France.[45]

Paris was the centre of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity known as the Age of Enlightenment. Diderot and d’Alembert published their Encyclopédie in 1751, and the Montgolfier Brothers launched the first manned flight in a hot-air balloon on 21 November 1783, from the gardens of the Château de la Muette. Paris was the financial capital of continental Europe, the primary European centre of book publishing and fashion and the manufacture of fine furniture and luxury goods.[46]

The Paris Opera was the centrepiece of Napoleon III’s new Paris. The architect, Charles Garnier, described the style simply as “Napoleon the Third.”

Louis XVI and the royal family were brought to Paris and made prisoners within the Tuileries Palace. In 1793, as the revolution turned more and more radical, the king, queen, and the mayor were guillotined (executed) in the Reign of Terror, along with more than 16,000 others throughout France.[48] The property of the aristocracy and the church was nationalised, and the city’s churches were closed, sold or demolished.[49] A succession of revolutionary factions ruled Paris until 9 November 1799 (coup d’état du 18 brumaire), when Napoléon Bonaparte seized power as First Consul.[50]

The population of Paris had dropped by 100,000 during the Revolution, but between 1799 and 1815, it surged with 160,000 new residents, reaching 660,000.[51]Napoleon Bonaparte replaced the elected government of Paris with a prefect reporting only to him. He began erecting monuments to military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe, and improved the neglected infrastructure of the city with new fountains, the Canal de l’Ourcq, Père Lachaise Cemetery and the city’s first metal bridge, the Pont des Arts.[51]

During the Restoration, the bridges and squares of Paris were returned to their pre-Revolution names, but the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris, (commemorated by the July Column on Place de la Bastille), brought a constitutional monarch, Louis Philippe I, to power. The first railway line to Paris opened in 1837, beginning a new period of massive migration from the provinces to the city.[51]
Louis-Philippe was overthrown by a popular uprising in the streets of Paris in 1848. His successor, Napoleon III, and the newly appointed prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, launched a gigantic public works project to build wide new boulevards, a new opera house, a central market, new aqueducts, sewers, and parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes.[52] In 1860, Napoleon III also annexed the surrounding towns and created eight new arrondissements, expanding Paris to its current limits.[52]

In the 1860s, Paris streets and monuments were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, giving it the name “The City of Light.”

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Paris was besieged by the Prussian army. After months of blockade, hunger, and then bombardment by the Prussians, the city was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. On 28 March, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune seized power in Paris. The Commune held power for two months, until it was harshly suppressed by the French army during the “Bloody Week” at the end of May 1871.[53]

The Eiffel Tower, under construction in November 1888, startled Parisians – and the world – with its modernity.

General Charles de Gaulle on the Champs-Élysées celebrating the liberation of Paris (26 August 1944)

On 14 June 1940, the German army marched into Paris, which had been declared an “open city“.[65] On 16–17 July 1942, following German orders, the French police and gendarmes arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,115 children, and confined them during five days at the Vel d’Hiv (Vélodrome d’Hiver), from which they were transported by train to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. None of the children came back.[66][67] On 25 August 1944, the city was liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division and the 4th Infantry Division of the United States Army. General Charles de Gaulle led a huge and emotional crowd down the Champs Élysées towards Notre Dame de Paris, and made a rousing speech from the Hôtel de Ville.[68]

In the 1950s and the 1960s, Paris became one front of the Algerian War for independence; in August 1961, the pro-independence FLN targeted and killed 11 Paris policemen, leading to the imposition of a curfew on Muslims of Algeria (who, at that time, were French citizens). On 17 October 1961, an unauthorised but peaceful protest demonstration of Algerians against the curfew led to violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators, in which at least 40 people were killed, including some thrown into the Seine. The anti-independence Organisation armée secrète (OAS), for their part, carried out a series of bombings in Paris throughout 1961 and 1962.[69][70]

In May 1968, protesting students occupied the Sorbonne and put up barricades in the Latin Quarter. Thousands of Parisian blue-collar workers joined the students, and the movement grew into a two-week general strike. Supporters of the government won the June elections by a large majority. The May 1968 events in France resulted in the break-up of the University of Paris into 13 independent campuses.[71] In 1975, the National Assembly changed the status of Paris to that of other French cities and, on 25 March 1977, Jacques Chirac became the first elected mayor of Paris since 1793.[72] The Tour Maine-Montparnasse, the tallest building in the city at 57 storeys and 210 metres (689 feet) high, was built between 1969 and 1973. It was highly controversial, and it remains the only building in the centre of the city over 32 storeys high.[73] The population of Paris dropped from 2,850,000 in 1954 to 2,152,000 in 1990, as middle-class families moved to the suburbs.[74] A suburban railway network, the RER (Réseau Express Régional), was built to complement the Métro, and the Périphérique expressway encircling the city, was completed in 1973.[75]

In the early 21st century, the population of Paris began to increase slowly again, as more young people moved into the city. It reached 2.25 million in 2011. In March 2001, Bertrand Delanoë became the first Socialist Mayor of Paris. In 2007, in an effort to reduce car traffic in the city, he introduced the Vélib’, a system which rents bicycles for the use of local residents and visitors. Bertrand Delanoë also transformed a section of the highway along the Left Bank of the Seine into an urban promenade and park, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine, which he inaugurated in June 2013.[77]

In 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Grand Paris project, to integrate Paris more closely with the towns in the region around it. After many modifications, the new area, named the Metropolis of Grand Paris, with a population of 6.7 million, was created on 1 January 2016.[78] In 2011, the City of Paris and the national government approved the plans for the Grand Paris Express, totalling 205 kilometres (127 miles) of automated metro lines to connect Paris, the innermost three departments around Paris, airports and high-speed rail (TGV) stations, at an estimated cost of €35 billion.[79] The system is scheduled to be completed by 2030.[80]

On 3 February 2017, a two-backpack-carrying, machete-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” attacked soldiers guarding the Louvre museum after they stopped him because of his bags; the assailant was shot, and no explosives were found.[87] On 18 March of the same year, in a Vitry-sur-Seine bar, a man held patrons hostage, then fled to later hold a gun to the head of an Orly Airport French soldier, shouting “I am here to die in the name of Allah”, and was shot dead by the soldier’s comrades.[88] On 20 April, a man shot dead French police officer on the Champs-Élysées, and was later shot dead himself.[89] On 19 June, a man rammed his weapons-and-explosives-laden vehicle into a police van on the Champs-Élysées, but the car only burst into flames.[90]

Geography

Paris is located in northern central France, in a north-bending arc of the river Seine whose crest includes two islands, the Île Saint-Louis and the larger Île de la Cité, which form the oldest part of the city. The river’s mouth on the English Channel (La Manche) is about 233 mi (375 km) downstream from the city. The city is spread widely on both banks of the river.[91] Overall, the city is relatively flat, and the lowest point is 35 m (115 ft) above sea level. Paris has several prominent hills, the highest of which is Montmartre at 130 m (427 ft).[92]

Excluding the outlying parks of Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, Paris covers an oval measuring about 87 km2 (34 sq mi) in area, enclosed by the 35 km (22 mi) ring road, the Boulevard Périphérique.[93] The city’s last major annexation of outlying territories in 1860 not only gave it its modern form but also created the 20 clockwise-spiralling arrondissements (municipal boroughs). From the 1860 area of 78 km2 (30 sq mi), the city limits were expanded marginally to 86.9 km2 (33.6 sq mi) in the 1920s. In 1929, the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes forest parks were officially annexed to the city, bringing its area to about 105 km2 (41 sq mi).[94] The metropolitan area of the city is 2,300 km2 (890 sq mi).[91]

Climate

Paris has a typical Western European oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb, although a bit more extreme, is still a typical climate of the category) which is affected by the North Atlantic Current. The overall climate throughout the year is mild and moderately wet.[96] Summer days are usually warm and pleasant with average temperatures between 15 and 25 °C (59 and 77 °F), and a fair amount of sunshine.[97] Each year, however, there are a few days when the temperature rises above 32 °C (90 °F). Longer periods of more intense heat sometimes occur, such as the heat wave of 2003 when temperatures exceeded 30 °C (86 °F) for weeks, reached 40 °C (104 °F) on some days and seldom cooled down at night.[98] Spring and autumn have, on average, mild days and fresh nights but are changing and unstable. Surprisingly warm or cool weather occurs frequently in both seasons.[99] In winter, sunshine is scarce; days are cool, nights cold but generally above freezing with low temperatures around 3 °C (37 °F).[100] Light night frosts are however quite common, but the temperature will dip below −5 °C (23 °F) for only a few days a year. Snow falls every year, but rarely stays on the ground. The city sometimes sees light snow or flurries with or without accumulation.[101]

Paris has an average annual precipitation of 641 mm (25.2 in), and experiences light rainfall distributed evenly throughout the year. However the city is known for intermittent abrupt heavy showers. The highest recorded temperature is 40.4 °C (104.7 °F) on 28 July 1947, and the lowest is −23.9 °C (−11.0 °F) on 10 December 1879.[102]

Administration

City government

For almost all of its long history, except for a few brief periods, Paris was governed directly by representatives of the king, emperor, or president of France. The city was not granted municipal autonomy by the National Assembly until 1974.[108] The first modern elected mayor of Paris was Jacques Chirac, elected 20 March 1977, becoming the city’s first mayor since 1793. The current mayor is Anne Hidalgo, a socialist, elected 5 April 2014.[109]

The mayor of Paris is elected indirectly by Paris voters; the voters of each arrondissement elect the Conseil de Paris (Council of Paris), composed of 163 members. Each arrondissement has a number of members depending upon its population, from 10 members for each of the least-populated arrondissements (1st through 9th) to 36 members for the most populated (the 15th). The elected council members select the mayor. Sometimes the candidate who receives the most votes citywide is not selected if the other candidate has won the support of the majority of council members. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë (2001–2014) was elected by only a minority of city voters, but a majority of council members.

The Hôtel de Ville, or city hall, has been at the same site since 1357.

Once elected, the council plays a largely passive role in the city government, primarily because it meets only once a month. The current council is divided between a coalition of the left of 91 members, including the socialists, communists, greens, and extreme left; and 71 members for the centre-right, plus a few members from smaller parties.[110]

Each of Paris’ 20 arrondissements has its own town hall and a directly elected council (conseil d’arrondissement), which, in turn, elects an arrondissement mayor.[111] The council of each arrondissement is composed of members of the Conseil de Paris and also members who serve only on the council of the arrondissement. The number of deputy mayors in each arrondissement varies depending upon its population. There are a total of 20 arrondissement mayors and 120 deputy mayors.[108]

The budget of the city for 2018 is 9.5 billion Euros, with an expected deficit of 5.5 billion Euros. 7.9 billion Euros are designated for city administration, and 1.7 billion Euros for investment. The number of city employees increased from 40,000 in 2001 to 55,000 in 2018. The largest part of the investment budget is earmarked for public housing (262 million Euros) and for real estate (142 million Euros).[112]

Métropole du Grand Paris

A map of the Greater Paris Metropolis (Métropole du Grand Paris) and its 131 communes

The new structure is administered by a Metropolitan Council of 210 members, not directly elected, but chosen by the councils of the member Communes. By 2020 its basic competencies will include urban planning, housing and protection of the environment.[113][115] The first president of the metropolitan council, Patrick Ollier, a Republican and the mayor of the town of Rueil-Malmaison, was elected on 22 January 2016. Though the Metropole has a population of nearly seven million people and accounts for 25 percent of the GDP of France, it has a very small budget: just 65 million Euros, compared with eight billion Euros for the City of Paris.[116]

Regional government

The Region of Île de France, including Paris and its surrounding communities, is governed by the Regional Council, which has its headquarters in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. It is composed of 209 members representing the different communes within the region. On 15 December 2015, a list of candidates of the Union of the Right, a coalition of centrist and right-wing parties, led by Valérie Pécresse, narrowly won the regional election, defeating a coalition of Socialists and ecologists. The Socialists had governed the region for seventeen years. The regional council has 121 members from the Union of the Right, 66 from the Union of the Left and 22 from the extreme right National Front.[117]

France’s highest courts are located in Paris. The Court of Cassation, the highest court in the judicial order, which reviews criminal and civil cases, is located in the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité,[123] while the Conseil d’État, which provides legal advice to the executive and acts as the highest court in the administrative order, judging litigation against public bodies, is located in the Palais-Royal in the 1st arrondissement.[124] The Constitutional Council, an advisory body with ultimate authority on the constitutionality of laws and government decrees, also meets in the Montpensier wing of the Palais Royal.[125]

Following the motto “Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris”;[126] the only sister city of Paris is Rome, although Paris has partnership agreements with many other cities around the world.[126]

There are 30,200 officers under the prefecture, and a fleet of more than 6,000 vehicles, including police cars, motorcycles, fire trucks, boats and helicopters. In addition to traditional police duties, the local police monitors the number of discount sales held by large stores (no more than two a year are allowed) and verify that during summer holidays, at least one bakery is open in every neighbourhood.[128] The national police has its own special unit for riot control and crowd control and security of public buildings, called the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS), a unit formed in 1944 right after the liberation of France. Vans of CRS agents are frequently seen in the centre of the city when there are demonstrations and public events.

The police are supported by the National Gendarmerie, a branch of the French Armed Forces, though their police operations now are supervised by the Ministry of the Interior. The traditional kepis of the gendarmes were replaced in 2002 with caps, and the force modernised, though they still wear kepis for ceremonial occasions.[129]

Crime in Paris is similar to that in most large cities. Violent crime is relatively rare in the city centre. Political violence is uncommon, though very large demonstrations may occur in Paris and other French cities simultaneously. These demonstrations, usually managed by a strong police presence, can turn confrontational and escalate into violence.[130]

Cityscape

Panorama of Paris as seen from the Eiffel Tower in a full 360-degree view (river flowing from north-east to south-west, right to left)

Most French rulers since the Middle Ages made a point of leaving their mark on a city that, contrary to many other of the world’s capitals, has never been destroyed by catastrophe or war. In modernising its infrastructure through the centuries, Paris has preserved even its earliest history in its street map.[131] At its origin, before the Middle Ages, the city was composed around several islands and sandbanks in a bend of the Seine; of those, two remain today: the île Saint-Louis and the île de la Cité. A third one is the 1827 artificially created île aux Cygnes.

Modern Paris owes much of its downtown plan and architectural harmony to Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. Between 1853 and 1870 they rebuilt the city centre, created the wide downtown boulevards and squares where the boulevards intersected, imposed standard facades along the boulevards, and required that the facades be built of the distinctive cream-grey “Paris stone“. They also built the major parks around the city centre.[132] The high residential population of its city centre also makes it much different from most other western major cities.[133]

Paris’ urbanism laws have been under strict control since the early 17th century,[134] particularly where street-front alignment, building height and building distribution is concerned. In recent developments, a 1974–2010 building height limitation of 37 metres (121 ft) was raised to 50 m (160 ft) in central areas and 180 metres (590 ft) in some of Paris’ peripheral quarters, yet for some of the city’s more central quarters, even older building-height laws still remain in effect.[134] The 210 metres (690 ft) Montparnasse tower was both Paris and France’s tallest building until 1973,[135] but this record has been held by the La Défense quarter Tour First tower in Courbevoie since its 2011 construction.

Housing

The most expensive residential streets in Paris in 2018 by average price per square meter were Avenue Montaigne (8th arrondissement), at 22,372 Euros per square meter; Place Dauphine (1st arrondissement) (20,373 Euros); and Rue de Furstemberg (6th arrondissement) at 18,839 Euros per square meter.[137]

The total number of residences in the City of Paris in 2011 was 1,356,074, up from a former high of 1,334,815 in 2006. Among these, 1,165,541 (85.9 percent) were main residences, 91,835 (6.8 percent) were secondary residences, and the remaining 7.3 percent were empty (down from 9.2 percent in 2006).[138]

Sixty-two percent of its buildings date from 1949 and before, 20 percent were built between 1949 and 1974, and only 18 percent of the buildings remaining were built after that date.[139]

Two-thirds of the city’s 1.3 million residences are studio and two-room apartments. Paris averages 1.9 people per residence, a number that has remained constant since the 1980s, but it is much less than Île-de-France’s 2.33 person-per-residence average. Only 33 percent of principal residence Parisians own their habitation (against 47 percent for the entire Île-de-France): the major part of the city’s population is a rent-paying one.[139]

Social or public housing represented 19.9 percent of the city’s total residences in 2017. Its distribution varies widely throughout the city, from 2.6 percent of the housing in the wealthy 7th arrondissement, to 24 percent in the 20th arrondissement, 26 percent in the 14th arrondissement, and 39.9 percent in the 19th arrondissement, on the poorer southwest and northern edges of the city.[140]

On the night of February 8–9, 2019, during a period of cold weather, a Paris NGO conducted its annual citywide count of homeless persons. They counted 3,641 homeless persons in Paris, of whom twelve percent were women. More than half had been homeless for more than a year. 2,885 were living in the streets or parks, 298 in train and metro stations, and 756 in other forms of temporary shelter. This was an increase of 588 persons since 2018.[141]

Paris and its suburbs

Aside from the 20th-century addition of the Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes and Paris heliport, Paris’ administrative limits have remained unchanged since 1860. The Seine département had been governing Paris and its suburbs since its creation in 1790, but the rising suburban population had made it difficult to govern as a unique entity. This problem was ‘resolved’ when its parent “District de la région parisienne” (‘district of the Paris region’) was reorganised into several new departments from 1968: Paris became a department in itself, and the administration of its suburbs was divided between the three new departments surrounding it. The district of the Paris region was renamed “Île-de-France” in 1977, but this abbreviated “Paris region” name is still commonly used today to describe the Île-de-France, and as a vague reference to the entire Paris agglomeration.[142] Long-intended measures to unite Paris with its suburbs began on 1 January 2016, when the Métropole du Grand Paris came into existence.[113]

Paris’ disconnect with its suburbs, its lack of suburban transportation, in particular, became all too apparent with the Paris agglomeration’s growth. Paul Delouvrier promised to resolve the Paris-suburbs mésentente when he became head of the Paris region in 1961:[143] two of his most ambitious projects for the Region were the construction of five suburban “villes nouvelles” (“new cities”)[144] and the RER commuter train network.[145] Many other suburban residential districts (grands ensembles) were built between the 1960s and 1970s to provide a low-cost solution for a rapidly expanding population:[146] These districts were socially mixed at first,[147] but few residents actually owned their homes (the growing economy made these accessible to the middle classes only from the 1970s).[148] Their poor construction quality and their haphazard insertion into existing urban growth contributed to their desertion by those able to move elsewhere and their repopulation by those with more limited possibilities.[148]

The Paris agglomeration’s urban sociology is basically that of 19th-century Paris: its fortuned classes are situated in its west and southwest, and its middle-to-lower classes are in its north and east. The remaining areas are mostly middle-class citizenry dotted with islands of fortuned populations located there due to reasons of historical importance, namely Saint-Maur-des-Fossés to the east and Enghien-les-Bains to the north of Paris.[150]

The official estimated population of the City of Paris was 2,206,488 as of January 1, 2019, according to INSEE, the official French statistical agency. This is a decline of 59,648 from 2015, close to the total population of the 5th arrondissement. [153] Despite the drop, Paris remains the most densely-populated city in Europe, with 252 residents per hectare, not counting parks. [154] This drop was attributed partly to a lower birth rate, to the departure of middle-class residents. and partly to the possible loss of housing in the city due to short-term rentals for tourism.[155][156]

Paris is the fifth largest municipality in the European Union, following London, Berlin, Madrid and Rome. Eurostat, the statistical agency of the EU, places Paris (6.5 million people) second behind London (8 million) and ahead of Berlin (3.5 million), based on the 2012 populations of what Eurostat calls “urban audit core cities”.[161]

City proper, urban area, and metropolitan area population from 1800 to 2010

The population of Paris today is lower than its historical peak of 2.9 million in 1921. The principal reasons were a significant decline in household size, and a dramatic migration of residents to the suburbs between 1962 and 1975. Factors in the migration included de-industrialisation, high rent, the gentrification of many inner quarters, the transformation of living space into offices, and greater affluence among working families. The city’s population loss came to a temporary halt at the beginning of the 21st century; the population estimate of July 2004 showed a population increase for the first time since 1954, and the population reached 2,234,000 by 2009, before declining again slightly in 2017.[162] It declined again in 2018.

According to Eurostat, the EU statistical agency, in 2012 the Commune of Paris was the most densely populated city in the European Union, with 21,616 people per square kilometre within the city limits (the NUTS-3 statistical area), ahead of Inner London West, which had 10,374 people per square kilometre. According to the same census, three departments bordering Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, had population densities of over 10,000 people per square kilometre, ranking among the 10 most densely populated areas of the EU.[163]

Migration

According to the 2012 French census, 586,163 residents of the City of Paris, or 26.2 percent, and 2,782,834 residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France), or 23.4 percent, were born outside of Metropolitan France (the last figure up from 22.4% at the 2007 census).[151]

26,700 of these in the City of Paris and 210,159 in the Paris Region were people born in Overseas France (more than two-thirds of whom in the French West Indies) and are therefore not counted as immigrants since they were legally French citizens at birth.[151]

A further 103,648 in the City of Paris and in 412,114 in the Paris Region were born in foreign countries with French citizenship at birth.[151] This concerns in particular the many Christians and Jews from North Africa who moved to France and Paris after the times of independence and are not counted as immigrants due to their being born French citizens.

The remaining group, people born in foreign countries with no French citizenship at birth, are those defined as immigrants under French law. According to the 2012 census, 135,853 residents of the City of Paris were immigrants from Europe, 112,369 were immigrants from the Maghreb, 70,852 from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, 5,059 from Turkey, 91,297 from Asia (outside Turkey), 38,858 from the Americas, and 1,365 from the South Pacific.[164] Note that the immigrants from the Americas and the South Pacific in Paris are vastly outnumbered by migrants from French overseas regions and territories located in these regions of the world.[151]

In 2012, there were 8,810 British citizens and 10,019 US citizens living in the City of Paris (Ville de Paris) and 20,466 British citizens and 16,408 US citizens living in the entire Paris Region (Île-de-France).[166][167]

Religion

French census data does not contain information about religious affiliation.[168] According to a 2011 survey by IFOP, a French public opinion research organisation, 61 percent of residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France) identified themselves as Roman Catholic, though just 15 percent said they were practising Catholics, while 46 percent were non-practicing. In the same survey, 7 percent of residents identified themselves as Muslims, 4 percent as Protestants, 2 percent as Jewish, and 25 percent as without religion.[169]

According to INSEE, the French government statistical office, between 4 and 5 million French residents were born or had at least one parent born in a predominantly Muslim country, particularly Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. An IFOP survey in 2008 reported that, of immigrants from these predominantly Muslim countries, 25 percent went to the mosque regularly; 41 percent practised the religion, and 34 percent were believers but did not practice the religion.[170][171] In 2012 and 2013, it was estimated that there were almost 500,000 Muslims in the City of Paris, 1.5 million Muslims in the Île-de-France region, and 4 to 5 million Muslims in France.[172][173]

The Jewish population of the Paris Region was estimated in 2014 to be 282,000, the largest concentration of Jews in the world outside of Israel and the United States.[174]

The economy of the City of Paris is based largely on services and commerce; of the 390,480 enterprises in the city, 80.6 percent are engaged in commerce, transportation, and diverse services, 6.5 percent in construction, and just 3.8 percent in industry.[177] The story is similar in the Paris Region (Île-de-France): 76.7 percent of enterprises are engaged in commerce and services, and 3.4 percent in industry.[178]

At the 2012 census, 59.5% of jobs in the Paris Region were in market services (12.0% in wholesale and retail trade, 9.7% in professional, scientific, and technical services, 6.5% in information and communication, 6.5% in transportation and warehousing, 5.9% in finance and insurance, 5.8% in administrative and support services, 4.6% in accommodation and food services, and 8.5% in various other market services), 26.9% in non-market services (10.4% in human health and social work activities, 9.6% in public administration and defence, and 6.9% in education), 8.2% in manufacturing and utilities (6.6% in manufacturing and 1.5% in utilities), 5.2% in construction, and 0.2% in agriculture.[179][180]

The Paris Region had 5.4 million salaried employees in 2010, of whom 2.2 million were concentrated in 39 pôles d’emplois or business districts. The largest of these, in terms of number of employees, is known in French as the QCA, or quartier central des affaires; it is in the western part of the City of Paris, in the 2nd, 8th, 9th, 16th, and 18th arrondissements. In 2010, it was the workplace of 500,000 salaried employees, about 30 percent of the salaried employees in Paris and 10 percent of those in the Île-de-France. The largest sectors of activity in the central business district were finance and insurance (16 percent of employees in the district) and business services (15 percent). The district also includes a large concentration of department stores, shopping areas, hotels and restaurants, as well a government offices and ministries.[181]

The second-largest business district in terms of employment is La Défense, just west of the city, where many companies installed their offices in the 1990s. In 2010, it was the workplace of 144,600 employees, of whom 38 percent worked in finance and insurance, 16 percent in business support services. Two other important districts, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois-Perret, are extensions of the Paris business district and of La Défense. Another district, including Boulogne-Billancourt, Issy-les-Moulineaux and the southern part of the 15th arrondissement, is a centre of activity for the media and information technology.[181]

The Paris Region is France’s leading region for economic activity, with a GDP of €681 billion (~US$850 billion) and €56,000 (~US$70,000) per capita.[3] In 2011, its GDP ranked second among the regions of Europe and its per-capita GDP was the 4th highest in Europe.[182][183] While the Paris region’s population accounted for 18.8 percent of metropolitan France in 2011,[184] the Paris region’s GDP accounted for 30 percent of metropolitan France’s GDP.[185]

The Paris Region economy has gradually shifted from industry to high-value-added service industries (finance, IT services) and high-tech manufacturing (electronics, optics, aerospace, etc.).[186] The Paris region’s most intense economic activity through the central Hauts-de-Seine department and suburban La Défense business district places Paris’ economic centre to the west of the city, in a triangle between the Opéra Garnier, La Défense and the Val de Seine.[186] While the Paris economy is dominated by services, and employment in manufacturing sector has declined sharply, the region remains an important manufacturing centre, particularly for aeronautics, automobiles, and “eco” industries.[186]

In the 2017 worldwide cost of living survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on a survey made in September 2016, Paris ranked as the seventh most expensive city in the world, and the second most expensive in Europe, after Zurich.[187]

Employment

Employment by economic sector in the Paris area (petite couronne), with population and unemployment figures (2012)

According to 2012 INSEE figures, 68 percent of employees in the City of Paris work in commerce, transportation, and services; 24.4 percent in public administration, health and social services; 4.4 percent in industry, and 0.1 percent in agriculture.[190]

The majority of Paris’ salaried employees fill 370,000 businesses services jobs, concentrated in the north-western 8th, 16th and 17th arrondissements.[191] Paris’ financial service companies are concentrated in the central-western 8th and 9th arrondissement banking and insurance district.[191] Paris’ department store district in the 1st, 6th, 8th and 9th arrondissements employ ten percent of mostly female Paris workers, with 100,000 of these registered in the retail trade.[191] Fourteen percent of Parisians work in hotels and restaurants and other services to individuals.[191] Nineteen percent of Paris employees work for the State in either in administration or education. The majority of Paris’ healthcare and social workers work at the hospitals and social housing concentrated in the peripheral 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements.[191] Outside Paris, the western Hauts-de-Seine department La Défense district specialising in finance, insurance and scientific research district, employs 144,600,[186] and the north-eastern Seine-Saint-Denis audiovisual sector has 200 media firms and 10 major film studios.[186]

Paris’ manufacturing is mostly focused in its suburbs, and the city itself has only around 75,000 manufacturing workers, most of which are in the textile, clothing, leather goods, and shoe trades.[186] Paris region manufacturing specialises in transportation, mainly automobiles, aircraft and trains, but this is in a sharp decline: Paris proper manufacturing jobs dropped by 64 percent between 1990 and 2010, and the Paris region lost 48 percent during the same period. Most of this is due to companies relocating outside the Paris region. The Paris region’s 800 aerospace companies employed 100,000.[186] Four hundred automobile industry companies employ another 100,000 workers: many of these are centred in the Yvelines department around the Renault and PSA-Citroen plants (this department alone employs 33,000),[186] but the industry as a whole suffered a major loss with the 2014 closing of a major Aulnay-sous-Bois Citroen assembly plant.[186]

The southern Essonne department specialises in science and technology,[186] and the south-eastern Val-de-Marne, with its wholesale Rungis food market, specialises in food processing and beverages.[186] The Paris region’s manufacturing decline is quickly being replaced by eco-industries: these employ about 100,000 workers.[186] In 2011, while only 56,927 construction workers worked in Paris itself,[192] its metropolitan area employed 246,639,[190] in an activity centred largely around the Seine-Saint-Denis (41,378)[193] and Hauts-de-Seine (37,303)[194] departments and the new business-park centres appearing there.

Unemployment

In the first trimester of 2018, the unemployment rate in the City of Paris was 7.1 percent. The provisional unemployment rate in the whole Paris Region was higher: 8.0 percent, and considerably higher in some suburbs, notably the Department of Seine-Saint-Denis to the east (11.8 percent) and the Val-d’Oise to the north (8.2 percent).[195]

Incomes

Median income in Paris and its nearest departments

The average net household income (after social, pension and health insurance contributions) in Paris was €36,085 for 2011.[196] It ranged from €22,095 in the 19th arrondissement[197] to €82,449 in the 7th arrondissement.[198] The median taxable income for 2011 was around €25,000 in Paris and €22,200 for Île-de-France.[199] Generally speaking, incomes are higher in the Western part of the city and in the western suburbs than in the northern and eastern parts of the urban area.[200]Unemployment was estimated at 8.2 percent in the City of Paris and 8.8 percent in the Île-de-France region in the first trimester of 2015. It ranged from 7.6 percent in the wealthy Essonne department to 13.1 percent in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, where many recent immigrants live.[201]

While Paris has some of the richest neighbourhoods in France, it also has some of the poorest, mostly on the eastern side of the city. In 2012, 14 percent of households in the city earned less than €977 per month, the official poverty line. Twenty-five percent of residents in the 19th arrondissement lived below the poverty line; 24 percent in the 18th, 22 percent in the 20th and 18 percent in the 10th. In the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood, the 7th arrondissement, 7 percent lived below the poverty line; 8 percent in the 6th arrondissement; and 9 percent in the 16th arrondissement.[202]

Tourism

Tourists from around the world make the Louvre the most-visited art museum in the world.

Greater Paris, comprising Paris and its three surrounding departments, received 23.6 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel arrivals. These included 12 million foreign visitors and 11.5 million French visitors. Of foreign visitors, the greatest number came from the United States (2 million), Great Britain (1.1 million), Germany (802.6 thousand) and China (774.4 thousand).[203]

In 2016, measured by the MasterCard Global Cities Destination Index, Paris was the third-busiest airline destination in the world, with 18.03 million visitors, behind Bangkok (21.47 million) and London (19.88 million).[204] According to the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, 393,008 workers in Greater Paris, or 12.4% of the total workforce, are engaged in tourism-related sectors such as hotels, catering, transport, and leisure.[205]

In addition to hotels, in 2017 Greater Paris had 84,000 homes registered with Airbnb, which received 2.3 million visitors.[213] Under French law, renters of these units must pay the Paris tourism tax. The company paid the city government 7.3 million Euros in 2016.[216]

Culture

Painting and sculpture

For centuries, Paris has attracted artists from around the world, who arrive in the city to educate themselves and to seek inspiration from its vast pool of artistic resources and galleries. As a result, Paris has acquired a reputation as the “City of Art”.[217] Italian artists were a profound influence on the development of art in Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in sculpture and reliefs. Painting and sculpture became the pride of the French monarchy and the French royal family commissioned many Parisian artists to adorn their palaces during the French Baroque and Classicism era. Sculptors such as Girardon, Coysevox and Coustou acquired reputations as the finest artists in the royal court in 17th-century France. Pierre Mignard became the first painter to King Louis XIV during this period. In 1648, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) was established to accommodate for the dramatic interest in art in the capital. This served as France’s top art school until 1793.[218]

Theatre

The largest opera houses of Paris are the 19th-century Opéra Garnier (historical Paris Opéra) and modern Opéra Bastille; the former tends toward the more classic ballets and operas, and the latter provides a mixed repertoire of classic and modern.[227] In middle of the 19th century, there were three other active and competing opera houses: the Opéra-Comique (which still exists), Théâtre-Italien, and Théâtre Lyrique (which in modern times changed its profile and name to Théâtre de la Ville).[228]Philharmonie de Paris, the modern symphonic concert hall of Paris, opened in January 2015. Another musical landmark is the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where the first performances of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes took place in 1913.

Theatre traditionally has occupied a large place in Parisian culture, and many of its most popular actors today are also stars of French television. The oldest and most famous Paris theatre is the Comédie-Française, founded in 1680. Run by the French government, it performs mostly French classics at the Salle Richelieu in the Palais-Royal at 2 rue de Richelieu, next to the Louvre.[229] of Other famous theatres include the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, next to the Luxembourg Gardens, also a state institution and theatrical landmark; the Théâtre Mogador, and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse.[230]

Literature

The first book printed in France, Epistolae (“Letters”), by Gasparinus de Bergamo (Gasparino da Barzizza), was published in Paris in 1470 by the press established by Johann Heynlin. Since then, Paris has been the centre of the French publishing industry, the home of some of the world’s best-known writers and poets, and the setting for many classic works of French literature. Almost all the books published in Paris in the Middle Ages were in Latin, rather than French. Paris did not become the acknowledged capital of French literature until the 17th century, with authors such as Boileau, Corneille, La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, several coming from the provinces, as well as the foundation of the Académie française.[232] In the 18th century, the literary life of Paris revolved around the cafés and salons; it was dominated by Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre de Marivaux and Pierre Beaumarchais.

Paris is a city of books and bookstores. In the 1970s, 80 percent of French-language publishing houses were found in Paris, almost all on the Left Bank in the 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements. Since that time, because of high prices, some publishers have moved out to the less expensive areas.[237] It is also a city of small bookstores. There are about 150 bookstores in the 5th arrondissement alone, plus another 250 book stalls along the Seine. Small Paris bookstores are protected against competition from discount booksellers by French law; books, even e-books, cannot be discounted more than five percent below their publisher’s cover price.[238]

Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s; by 1880 Paris had some 150 dance halls in the working-class neighbourhoods of the city.[242] Patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of the cabrette (a bellows-blown bagpipe locally called a “musette”) and often the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy) in the cafés and bars of the city. Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and established themselves in Auvergnat bars especially in the 19th arrondissement,[243] and the romantic sounds of the accordion has since become one of the musical icons of the city. Paris became a major centre for jazz and still attracts jazz musicians from all around the world to its clubs and cafés.[244]

Immediately after the War the Saint-Germain-des-Pres quarter and the nearby Saint-Michel quarter became home to many small jazz clubs, mostly found in cellars because of a lack of space; these included the Caveau des Lorientais, the Club Saint-Germain, the Rose Rouge, the Vieux-Colombier, and the most famous, Le Tabou. They introduced Parisians to the music of Claude Luter, Boris Vian, Sydney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, and Henri Salvador. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted toward rock and roll.[246]

Paris has a big hip hop scene. This music became popular during the 1980s.[250] The presence of a large African and Caribbean community helped to its development, it gave a voice, a political and social status for many minorities.[251]

Cinema

The movie industry was born in Paris when Auguste and Louis Lumière projected the first motion picture for a paying audience at the Grand Café on 28 December 1895.[252] Many of Paris’ concert/dance halls were transformed into cinemas when the media became popular beginning in the 1930s. Later, most of the largest cinemas were divided into multiple, smaller rooms. Paris’ largest cinema room today is in the Grand Rex theatre with 2,700 seats.[253]Big multiplex cinemas have been built since the 1990s. UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles with 27 screens, MK2 Bibliothèque with 20 screens and UGC Ciné Cité Bercy with 18 screens are among the largest.[254]

Parisians tend to share the same movie-going trends as many of the world’s global cities, with cinemas primarily dominated by Hollywood-generated film entertainment. French cinema comes a close second, with major directors (réalisateurs) such as Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luc Besson, and the more slapstick/popular genre with director Claude Zidi as an example. European and Asian films are also widely shown and appreciated.[255] On 2 February 2000, Philippe Binant realised the first digital cinema projection in Europe, with the DLP CINEMA technology developed by Texas Instruments, in Paris.[256]

Restaurants and cuisine

Since the late 18th century, Paris has been famous for its restaurants and haute cuisine, food meticulously prepared and artfully presented. A luxury restaurant, La Taverne Anglaise, opened in 1786 in the arcades of the Palais-Royal by Antoine Beauvilliers; it featured an elegant dining room, an extensive menu, linen tablecloths, a large wine list and well-trained waiters; it became a model for future Paris restaurants. The restaurant Le Grand Véfour in the Palais-Royal dates from the same period.[257] The famous Paris restaurants of the 19th century, including the Café de Paris, the Rocher de Cancale, the Café Anglais, Maison Dorée and the Café Riche, were mostly located near the theatres on the Boulevard des Italiens; they were immortalised in the novels of Balzac and Émile Zola. Several of the best-known restaurants in Paris today appeared during the Belle Epoque, including Maxim’s on Rue Royale, Ledoyen in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, and the Tour d’Argent on the Quai de la Tournelle.[258]

Today, due to Paris’ cosmopolitan population, every French regional cuisine and almost every national cuisine in the world can be found there; the city has more than 9,000 restaurants.[259] The Michelin Guide has been a standard guide to French restaurants since 1900, awarding its highest award, three stars, to the best restaurants in France. In 2018, of the 27 Michelin three-star restaurants in France, ten are located in Paris. These include both restaurants which serve classical French cuisine, such as L’Ambroisie in the Place des Vosges, and those which serve non-traditional menus, such as L’Astrance, which combines French and Asian cuisines. Several of France’s most famous chefs, including Pierre Gagnaire, Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alléno and Alain Passard, have three-star restaurants in Paris.[260][261]

In addition to the classical restaurants, Paris has several other kinds of traditional eating places. The café arrived in Paris in the 17th century, when the beverage was first brought from Turkey, and by the 18th century Parisian cafés were centres of the city’s political and cultural life. The Café Procope on the Left Bank dates from this period. In the 20th century, the cafés of the Left Bank, especially Café de la Rotonde and Le Dôme Café in Montparnasse and Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots on Boulevard Saint Germain, all still in business, were important meeting places for painters, writers and philosophers.[258] A bistro is a type of eating place loosely defined as a neighbourhood restaurant with a modest decor and prices and a regular clientele and a congenial atmosphere. Its name is said to have come in 1814 from the Russian soldiers who occupied the city; “bistro” means “quickly” in Russian, and they wanted their meals served rapidly so they could get back their encampment. Real bistros are increasingly rare in Paris, due to rising costs, competition from cheaper ethnic restaurants, and different eating habits of Parisian diners.[262] A brasserie originally was a tavern located next to a brewery, which served beer and food at any hour. Beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1867; it became a popular kind of restaurant which featured beer and other beverages served by young women in the national costume associated with the beverage, particular German costumes for beer. Now brasseries, like cafés, serve food and drinks throughout the day.[263]

Some other yearly festivals are Paris-Plages, a festive event that lasts from mid-July to mid-August when the Right Bank of the Seine is converted into a temporary beach with sand, deck chairs and palm trees;[268] Journées du Patrimoine, Fête de la Musique, Techno Parade, Nuit Blanche, Cinéma au clair de lune, Printemps des rues, Festival d’automne, and Fête des jardins. The Carnaval de Paris, one of the oldest festivals in Paris, dates back to the Middle Ages.

Education

The former main building of the University of Paris is now used by classes from Paris-Sorbonne University and other autonomous campuses.

Paris is the département with the highest proportion of highly educated people. In 2009, around 40 percent of Parisians held a licence-level diploma or higher, the highest proportion in France,[269] while 13 percent have no diploma, the third-lowest percentage in France. Education in Paris and the Île-de-France region employs approximately 330,000 people, 170,000 of whom are teachers and professors teaching approximately 2.9 million children and students in around 9,000 primary, secondary, and higher education schools and institutions.[270]

The University of Paris, founded in the 12th century, is often called the Sorbonne after one of its original medieval colleges. It was broken up into thirteen autonomous universities in 1970, following the student demonstrations in 1968. Most of the campuses today are in the Latin Quarter where the old university was located, while others are scattered around the city and the suburbs.[271][citation not found]

There are several academic libraries and archives in Paris. The Sorbonne Library in the 5th arrondissement is the largest university library in Paris. In addition to the Sorbonne location, there are branches in Malesherbes, Clignancourt-Championnet, Michelet-Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie, Serpente-Maison de la Recherche, and Institut des Etudes Ibériques.[276] Other academic libraries include Interuniversity Pharmaceutical Library, Leonardo da Vinci University Library, Paris School of Mines Library, and the René Descartes University Library.[277]

Tennis is another popular sport in Paris and throughout France; the French Open, held every year on the red clay of the Roland Garros National Tennis Centre,[281] is one of the four Grand Slam events of the world professional tennis tour. The 17,000-seat Bercy Arena (officially named AccorHotels Arena and formerly known as the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy) is the venue for the annual Paris MastersATP Tour tennis tournament and has been a frequent site of national and international tournaments in basketball, boxing, cycling, handball, ice hockey, show jumping and other sports. The Bercy Arena also hosted the 2017 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship, together with Cologne, Germany. The final stages of the FIBA EuroBasket 1999 were also played at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy.

Infrastructure

Transport

Paris is a major rail, highway, and air transport hub. The Île-de-France Mobilités, formerly Syndicat des transports d’Île-de-France (STIF), and before that the Syndicat des transports parisiens (STP), oversees the transit network in the region.[283] The syndicate coordinates public transport and contracts it out to the RATP (operating 347 bus lines, the Métro, eight tramway lines, and sections of the RER), the SNCF (operating suburban rails, one tramway line and the other sections of the RER) and the Optile consortium of private operators managing 1,176 bus lines.[284]

Métro, RER and tramway

Since the inauguration of its first line in 1900, Paris’ Métro (subway) network has grown to become the city’s most widely used local transport system; today it carries about 5.23 million passengers daily[285] through 16 lines, 303 stations (385 stops) and 220 km (136.7 mi) of rails. Superimposed on this is a ‘regional express network’, the RER, whose five lines (A, B, C, D, and E), 257 stops and 587 km (365 mi) of rails connect Paris to more distant parts of the urban area.[286]

Over €26.5 billion will be invested over the next 15 years to extend the Métro network into the suburbs,[286] with notably the Grand Paris Express project.

In addition, the Paris region is served by a light rail network of nine lines, the tramway: Line T1 runs from Asnières-Gennevilliers to Noisy-le-Sec, Line T2 runs from Pont de Bezons to Porte de Versailles, Line T3a runs from Pont du Garigliano to Porte de Vincennes, Line T3b runs from Porte de Vincennes to Porte de la Chapelle, Line T5 runs from Saint-Denis to Garges-Sarcelles, Line T6 runs from Châtillon to Viroflay, Line T7 runs from Villejuif to Athis-Mons, Line T8 runs from Saint-Denis to Épinay-sur-Seine and Villetaneuse, all of which are operated by the RATP Group,[287] and line T4 runs from Bondy RER to Aulnay-sous-Bois, which is operated by the state rail carrier SNCF.[286] Five new light rail lines are currently in various stages of development.[288]

Orly Airport, located in the southern suburbs of Paris, replaced Le Bourget as the principal airport of Paris from the 1950s to the 1980s.[291] Charles de Gaulle Airport, located on the edge of the northern suburbs of Paris, opened to commercial traffic in 1974 and became the busiest Parisian airport in 1993.[292] For the year 2017 it was the 5th busiest airport in the world by international traffic and it is the hub for the nation’s flag carrierAir France.[286] Beauvais-Tillé Airport, located 69 kilometres (43 miles) north of Paris’ city centre, is used by charter airlines and low-cost carriers such as Ryanair.

Domestically, air travel between Paris and some of France’s largest cities such as Lyon, Marseille, or Strasbourg has been in a large measure replaced by high-speed rail due to the opening of several high-speed TGV rail lines from the 1980s. For example, after the LGV Méditerranée opened in 2001, air traffic between Paris and Marseille declined from 2,976,793 passengers in 2000 to 1,502,196 passengers in 2014.[293] After the LGV Est opened in 2007, air traffic between Paris and Strasbourg declined from 1,006,327 passengers in 2006 to 157,207 passengers in 2014.[293]

Internationally, air traffic has increased markedly in recent years between Paris and the Gulf airports, the emerging nations of Africa, Russia, Turkey, Portugal, Italy, and mainland China, whereas noticeable decline has been recorded between Paris and the British Isles, Egypt, Tunisia, and Japan.[294][295]

Motorways

Ring roads of Paris

The city is also the most important hub of France’s motorway network, and is surrounded by three orbital freeways: the Périphérique,[93] which follows the approximate path of 19th-century fortifications around Paris, the A86 motorway in the inner suburbs, and finally the Francilienne motorway in the outer suburbs. Paris has an extensive road network with over 2,000 km (1,243 mi) of highways and motorways.

Waterways

The Paris region is the most active water transport area in France, with most of the cargo handled by Ports of Paris in facilities located around Paris. The rivers Loire, Rhine, Rhone, Meuse, and Scheldt can be reached by canals connecting with the Seine, which include the Canal Saint-Martin, Canal Saint-Denis, and the Canal de l’Ourcq.[296]

Cycling

There are 440 km (270 mi) of cycle paths and routes in Paris. These include piste cyclable (bike lanes separated from other traffic by physical barriers such as a kerb) and bande cyclable (a bicycle lane denoted by a painted path on the road). Some 29 km (18 mi) of specially marked bus lanes are free to be used by cyclists, with a protective barrier protecting against encroachments from vehicles.[297] Cyclists have also been given the right to ride in both directions on certain one-way streets. Paris offers a bike sharing system called Vélib’ with more than 20,000 public bicycles distributed at 1,800 parking stations,[298] which can be rented for short and medium distances including one way trips.

Electricity

Electricity is provided to Paris through a peripheral grid fed by multiple sources. As of 2012, around 50% of electricity generated in the Île-de-France comes from cogeneration energy plants located near the outer limits of the region; other energy sources include the Nogent nuclear power plant (35%), trash incineration (9% – with cogeneration plants, these provide the city in heat as well), methane gas (5%), hydraulics (1%), solar power (0.1%) and a negligible amount of wind power (0.034 GWh).[299] A quarter of Paris’ district heating is to come from a plant in Saint-Ouen, burning a 50/50-mix of coal and 140,000 tonnes of wood pellets from the US per year.[300]

Water and sanitation

Paris in its early history had only the rivers Seine and Bièvre for water. From 1809, the Canal de l’Ourcq provided Paris with water from less-polluted rivers to the north-east of the capital.[301] From 1857, the civil engineer Eugène Belgrand, under Napoleon III, oversaw the construction of a series of new aqueducts that brought water from locations all around the city to several reservoirs built atop the Capital’s highest points of elevation.[302] From then on, the new reservoir system became Paris’ principal source of drinking water, and the remains of the old system, pumped into lower levels of the same reservoirs, were from then on used for the cleaning of Paris’ streets. This system is still a major part of Paris’ modern water-supply network. Today Paris has more than 2,400 km (1,491 mi) of underground passageways[303] dedicated to the evacuation of Paris’ liquid wastes.

In 1982, Mayor Chirac introduced the motorcycle-mounted Motocrotte to remove dog faeces from Paris streets.[304] The project was abandoned in 2002 for a new and better enforced local law, under the terms of which dog owners can be fined up to €500 for not removing their dog faeces.[305] The air pollution in Paris, from the point of view of particulate matter (PM10), is the highest in France with 38 µg/m³.[306]

Cemeteries

In Paris’ Roman era, its main cemetery was located to the outskirts of the Left Bank settlement, but this changed with the rise of Catholicism, where most every inner-city church had adjoining burial grounds for use by their parishes. With Paris’ growth many of these, particularly the city’s largest cemetery, les Innocents, were filled to overflowing, creating quite unsanitary conditions for the capital. When inner-city burials were condemned from 1786, the contents of all Paris’ parish cemeteries were transferred to a renovated section of Paris’ stone mines outside the “Porte d’Enfer” city gate, today place Denfert-Rochereau in the 14th arrondissement.[313][314] The process of moving bones from Cimetière des Innocents to the catacombs took place between 1786 and 1814;[315] part of the network of tunnels and remains can be visited today on the official tour of the catacombs.

After a tentative creation of several smaller suburban cemeteries, the Prefect Nicholas Frochot under Napoleon Bonaparte provided a more definitive solution in the creation of three massive Parisian cemeteries outside the city limits.[316] Open from 1804, these were the cemeteries of Père Lachaise, Montmartre, Montparnasse, and later Passy; these cemeteries became inner-city once again when Paris annexed all neighbouring communes to the inside of its much larger ring of suburban fortifications in 1860. New suburban cemeteries were created in the early 20th century: The largest of these are the Cimetière parisien de Saint-Ouen, the Cimetière parisien de Pantin (also known as Cimetière parisien de Pantin–Bobigny), the Cimetière parisien d’Ivry, and the Cimetière parisien de Bagneux.[317] Some of the most famous people in the world are buried in Parisian cemeteries.

Healthcare

The Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, the oldest hospital in the city

Health care and emergency medical service in the City of Paris and its suburbs are provided by the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), a public hospital system that employs more than 90,000 people (including practitioners, support personnel, and administrators) in 44 hospitals.[318] It is the largest hospital system in Europe. It provides health care, teaching, research, prevention, education and emergency medical service in 52 branches of medicine. The hospitals receive more than 5.8 million annual patient visits.[318]

Notes

^The word was most likely created by Parisians of the lower popular class who spoke *argot*, then *parigot* was used in a provocative manner outside the Parisian region and throughout France to mean Parisians in general.